


In Dark Woods

by shimere277



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Diary or Journal, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-23
Updated: 2009-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-05 02:56:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/37061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shimere277/pseuds/shimere277
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maddy reflects on a peculiar childhood incident...</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Dark Woods

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ohvienna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohvienna/gifts).



> I was just thinking today that I should have listed Twin Peaks as a fandom I could write for, and then I spotted your request. So here's a treat - hope you like it!

From the Very Secret Diary of Maddy Ferguson

Dear Diary,

I dreamed about the owls again. The owls are not what they seem.

Maybe I should write something down, something that happened a long time ago, but that I never wrote about before. I think I was too scared. Like if I didn't write it down, it would go away. But the darkness doesn't go away just because you pretend it's not there. If it did, Laura would still be alive.

This is way back when I was pretty young. I think I was thirteen. Well, it was just after Laura's tenth birthday party, and she was four and one quarter years younger than me, so I must have been fourteen. How old I was doesn't matter, but it was important that it was Laura's birthday.

This was when we used to pretend we were sisters. "We're sisters, right? So I can tell you anything," she said. "Sure," I said, cause I knew she was going to tell me a secret. Laura always had the best secrets, usually about a boy she liked. She was always boy-crazy.

She took me up into the woods. To a couple of kids, those woods were a pretty scary place. There are all sorts of Indian legends about them. Stories about sacred places where the spirits get angry at you if you disturb them. Also stories about dangerous men who kidnap pretty little girls, and no one ever sees them again. At least that's what my mom told us. I'll bet that she just didn't want us going up in the woods alone. She was probably afraid we would get lost, which is a much more realistic fear for a mom to have, if you think about it. But I believed the stories. I was scared.

But you know, it had the opposite effect on Laura. If you told her not to do something, it would make her want to do it even more.

So we got way out into the woods, and it was starting to get dark. I was cold, and a little bit hungry. I asked her what it was she wanted to show me.

"Bob gave me a birthday present," she said.

I asked her if she meant Bobby. Bobby was kind of a jerk, even back then. He was the kind of boy who would be mean to you to show you he liked you. I couldn't see him giving her anything better than a frog. But she laughed at me. "No, not Bobby, Bob. Big Bad Bob."

"Am I supposed to know this Bob?" I asked her.

"You're my sister, aren't you?" For some reason, the question scared me. Really scared me. I almost told her to cut it out. I almost said that we were just pretending. But Laura had this weird look on her face, like this was something really serious, way too serious for a little girl. So I said yes.

All of a sudden, all of these owls started hooting. Maybe it was cause it just got dark enough for them to wake up, but it was so weird. So creepy.

Laura dug through some leaves. There was a trap door underneath. It opened up into a little hole lined with bricks. She pointed at it, and I looked inside. "See?" she asked. "See, see, see?" She kept saying it over and over again.

It was – I swear I'm not making this up – a can of creamed corn.

I started laughing. I thought it was a big joke. She was trying to scare me. But I looked at her and, I don't know how to say it, she was weird. Dark, somehow, kind of desperate. And she kept repeating, "See, see, see," over and over.

And then I saw.

You know what I mean. Like Ma, and Laura's mom. Like Laura did, but I didn't know that then. This was the first time I had a vision. I saw a little boy with a man. He was the kind of man that you see in those after-school specials that's the example of the stranger you're not supposed to talk to. Well, the little boy was talking to him. I wanted to yell and scream at the boy to run away, not to talk to the stranger. And it was weird because I knew somehow that the boy was Uncle Leland.

And then Laura and I were in this room that looked like a hotel lobby, but we weren't allowed to leave. It was too hot and too cold in flashes, but never the right temperature. I could still hear the owls. The owls were outside, but they were looking in at us. Laughing at us. The owls were laughing at us. It's like they wanted to know something.

You know, it was after that night I started to write poetry in my diary. I told Laura it was because I didn't want my mom to find it and know that I'd been kissing boys, so I put my most secret thoughts in poems. But the real reason was that for a while, I thought the owls were watching everything I did.

Well, you probably want to know what happened, right? Nothing. I screamed and ran. I could hear Laura yelling for me to come back, not to leave her alone in the dark. But I kept running. I ran smack down the woods into somebody's legs. I nearly knocked him over. But it was even more embarrassing cause at first I thought it was the strange man, and I screamed again. But it was just Uncle Leland, coming to look for us before it got too late.

Laura never said anything about it, about me chickening out and leaving her there. We just went back to her house and watched TV and ate microwave popcorn. But we never pretended to be sisters again. Now I feel terrible about it. For some reason, I can't shake the feeling that something bad happened, like she was asking me for help, and I failed her.

Now that she's gone, I wonder if I could have changed things. Maybe if she trusted me more, I could have reached her. I feel like she's watching me sometimes. I hope she's watching me from heaven. I pray for her all the time, just in case she's not. I promise that I will never leave her alone in the dark again.


End file.
